In 1943, the psychologist Abraham Maslow authored an essay on “a theory of human motivation.” This work became one of the most influential pieces in psychology and is nearly always taught in introductory psychology courses. In a nutshell, Maslow’s theory is as follows:
(1) Every individual has a set of basic needs. These are physiological (i.e., sleep, nutrition), safety (i.e., physical, emotional), love (i.e., belonging), esteem (i.e., self-respect, recognition of one’s achievements and worth), and self-actualization (i.e., recognition and striving to achieve one’s full potential).
(2) We are all motivated to achieve these needs or obtain the environment and conditions that will likely fulfill these needs. Having a stable job, for example, may help a person achieve physiological needs, esteem and even love (e.g., by having status and ability to participate in a relationship on one’s terms).
(3) These basic goals are related to each other, and we generally strive to fulfill the most urgent needs to our survival (i.e., maintaining basic metabolic functioning) before moving to less urgent needs for our immediate survival (i.e., discovering our full potential). However, the order in which we try to achieve these needs is far less important than say, our motivation towards a need or the obstacles that obstruct that given need in a particular situation.
(4) When we cannot meet the goals that we are striving for, we develop a threat-based reaction, which may manifest in anxiety, and general physical and psychological dysfunction.
Although it was not his work, Maslow’s theory became immortalized in a pyramidal representation of needs, with the lower needs building the foundation for climbing towards the higher needs.
It is worth noting that Maslow did not comment extensively on the relationship between these needs and the influence of one’s culture, family and developmental situation in shaping the way we think about these needs. However, he did roughly divide the needs into two categories: deficiency and growth-based needs. Simply defined, deficit-based needs (which Maslow called D-needs) will diminish in intensity as it becomes satisfied. Think about a person's need for food, drink, sleep or sex--these desires will all diminish as the cravings become satisfied. However, problems arise when we cannot quickly or efficiently take care of these needs. The psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman notes that the “greater the deficiency of these needs, the more we distort reality to fit our expectations and treat others in accordance with their usefulness in helping us satisfy our most deficient needs.” We can say that these needs unmet risks triggering a “scarcity” mindset. In fact, recent science suggests that that our very ways of problem-solving and even perceiving reality can be sharply distorted by being in a chronic state of scarcity. For example, when someone is experiencing money-scarcity, they tend to “tunnel” focus on the costs of everything and may not make decisions that are best for the long-term but rather focused on the immediate goal of relieving poverty. That is why, for instance, someone who is financially desperate may take out high-interest loans that risk putting them even further in debt. Notice that for acute and temporary states of scarcity however, the ability to block out the world and focus on what we are lacking can be an important survival advantage. However, in our increasingly complex and connected world, there is a lot of chronic scarcity abound (i.e., with many people lacking time, money, family connections, meaningful work etc.). In this world, it is generally not adaptive to tune out all the other things we need to pay attention to, in order to deal with the scarcities that just will not go away. The other category of needs, which Maslow called the Being-Realm of existence (B-realm), these growth-based needs get more sophisticated and even intensify as we work towards their fulfillment. Think of creative pursuits or building deep connections with another person. The more we do, the further we want to go. The intensification of growth-based neediness may also result in cognitive and behavioral changes. The science suggests that these psychological shifts are generally positive and may include enhanced compassion, authenticity, self-determination and grittiness.
There has been vigorous debate as to whether we can voluntarily shift towards growth-based needs or whether we need certain basic provisions (i.e., financial freedom, cultural autonomy, social connections) to free us from tunneling in response to chronic scarcity. Can we simply choose growth? And does this the answer to this question inform the roles of the institutions (i.e., healthcare, education, government) that support us as citizens? Do we need institutions like the self-help and motivation industry to drill into us the values of positivity and self-mastery or do we need industry support in helping us all meet the basic bottom lines of the hierarchy? Has the pyramid been flipped, as has been argued in this piece here, such that the growth-based needs are now widely considered prerequisites for the achievement of physical/material provisions? In fact, psychology—largely driven by the humanistic school of thinking—has directly contributed to this distortion of Maslow’s hierarchical scheme. We have argued—against the rational economic model, for example—that human beings are not relentlessly driven merely by economic concerns and that we are also motivated by meaning and higher-order values (e.g., pleasure, creativity, authenticity). Although this sounds reasonable enough to many of us, as the scientists of scarcity discovered, humans who are chronically driven by deficit-based needs think precisely in these limited, 'anti-humanistic' ways. Economists now even call this form of thinking tunneling.
Unfortunately, tunneling does not respond well to encouragement, information-giving, homework, and action-strategies that we so heavily invest on in psychotherapy. These interventions may be fine for someone already in a growth-based mindset but will not work for someone who is tunneling in problems of scarcity. Tunneling is a rather intensive and narrow use of brain-functioning—which makes sense given that, metabolically, the other brain functions that are considered less essential (i.e., planning, judgment, reasoning, decision-making) can then be taken ‘offline’ to conserve the already scarce resources that the individual may be working with. Poverty-thinking can be extremely energy draining. For the people we see that are dealing with some form of scarcity whether it be poverty (material-scarcity), busyness (time-scarcity) or loneliness (social-scarcity)—particularly those forms of scarcity that are ‘non-optional’ we need a different strategy. Also, I don’t believe that this thinking should be considered to be a lack of motivation, therefore motivational theories of change—although helpful in conceptualizing treatment—can be unnecessarily judgmental and misleading. Rather than seeing a person who is tunneling as ‘unmotivated’ to make behavior changes, perhaps they need an executive functioning ‘boost’ in the form of the therapist helping them plan, set goals, make decisions and allocate resources to better manage their particular form of scarcity. This could be helping the client complete forms to apply for financial aid or physically accompanying them to a social meetup group.
The conclusion here is that therapists and clients should not assume that there is a one-size fits all way of thinking about meeting one’s goals. It is important to recognize whether we are dealing with need-based goals or growth-based goals and to assess the mindset that accompanies the striving towards such goals. Psychology needs to realistically asses the difference in motivation/drive between the goals of growth and that of deficit/scarcity. We can then formulate care plans based on where people are at and not on where we wish them to be.
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